


Ghosts

by dreamiflame



Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-12
Updated: 2003-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:33:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/pseuds/dreamiflame
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Data never really gets deleted. Spoilers for Matrix Revolutions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my lovely beta Sara, who looked this over and made it a better story.

The Matrix is full of ghosts. Neo has become one of them.

In the Matrix, people's minds are hooked in to the system. They change and become numbers, programs to fit the Matrix. This means copies of people's minds remain floating in the cyber-ether, even after their bodies have been killed.

Trinity is here, too, invisible but real, like Neo is himself. He hadn't expected it, had expected to fly off into the... whatever there was out there (since the discovery of the Matrix, and his acceptance of being the One, Neo has forgotten how to believe in God), away from the Matrix. Which was foolish, he now realizes. He has been dead before, bullet to the heart and Smith's sneering face his last conscious memories. At the time, he had thought he had stayed because he was the One, because his purpose wasn't done yet.

He knows better now. Everyone who has lived in the Matrix has left an imprint of their minds behind. Perhaps some part of him _has_ gone on to a better place, or whatever awaits them after death, but a part lingers on, despite his wishes.

In a way, it seems fitting. Besides, here, he still has Trinity, and though he cannot, truly, see her (cannot, truly, see himself, not really, and he wonders if there are any in the Matrix that could), he can feel her, and hear her voice as if over a great distance, faint but clear.

He wonders what he does now. He's dead, dead to the machines and Morpheus and Zion, but he isn't dead, floating about the Matrix as he does. Things are different, now. His sacrifice forced things to change, as they'd hoped. The human minds are being released, and the Matrix is emptying, populated only by obsolete programs who refuse to suffer deletion, and the ghosts of every human who ever believed he or she lived inside the Matrix's perfect imperfect world.

There are no more Agents: they are unnecessary now. Neo wonders how much trouble the machine world would have had from Agents like Smith if he hadn't already been destroyed. How many of them submitted to the deletion, and how many are seeking to avoid it. The Merovingian will have many new employees, Neo is sure of that.

He has seen Seraph, walking down a street where the people vanished one by one like a magic trick. He wasn't sure if Seraph could see him, but the program gave no sign, and Neo was reluctant to try and talk. He has Trinity. There isn't much more he needs.

The Twins brushed by him, pale and see-through, and for a moment, Neo was sure Morpheus had succeeded, and the Twins were ghosts, too, but then they solidified, white and corporeal, and he realized he was wrong. Not surprising, he feels. Neo has been wrong about many things.

The one person (and he still thinks of them as people, because they _look_ and act like people, and it seems rather foolish to hold to a unnecessary distinction when it no longer applies to you) he had gone out of his way to avoid is the Oracle. Neo is sure she could tell him what has happened, explain what he is now, but Neo has accepted that he is not ready to know, no yet. There is no urgency in him anymore, and that brings a sense of peace so powerful if he had a body he is sure he would fall over in relief. He isn't the hope of millions anymore, he is just a memory. One ghost among billions, the same as everyone else.

The Matrix is getting smaller, he realizes one day (not that time has all that much meaning, but it is habit, and hard to break). There are fewer and fewer people, and soon there will be none, only the refugees. They do not need the entire grand scope of the Matrix and so it is shrinking. The City he haunts becomes less a thing that is truly New York, and more a mix of many different cities: Sydney, London, Paris, Berlin. Fragments, melded together to make a whole. He wonders if it's supposed to be a ghost city.

He thinks it may be.

Neo explores, noticing the new places, the Eiffel Tower across the river from Big Ben, the Hollywood sign on a hill overlooking the Coliseum. All of the amazing places in the world combined, a hodge-podge for a dying idea. It occurs to him quite suddenly to worry about what would happen if they turned the Matrix off entirely. Would he be able to find Trinity again?

It takes him a long time to realize there's a ghost of Morpheus around, too. After that, he starts looking deliberately, and finds them all: Cypher, Apoc, Switch, Mouse, the Kid, Niobe, Ghost, all of them. None of his free-born friends are there, and he isn't surprised. They have never been to the Matrix, were never part of the system. They _have_ gone on.

Neo hopes a part of him went with them.

In the City that has ceased to be New York and where the numbers of people dwindle constantly, Neo is surprised to look up one day to find someone looking back at him. It's the little girl, Sati, and her eyes are trained upon him. He opens his mouth in surprise and she smiles, reaching out to touch him. "Hello, Neo," she says, and her fingers pass right through him. They feel strange in the memory of his face. "The Oracle told me we'd probably see you again."

Instinct makes him look around, seeking the Oracle, but there's only Sati, drawing her hand back again. Trinity is beside him as always, and Sati smiles at her too. "Hello Trinity. I'm Sati."

"You can see us?" It's the first time Neo can remember hearing Trinity speak in a long time. They had given it up before the City had changed, because really, they'd said everything there was to say. They are only echoes, after all.

Sati nods, sitting down on the sidewalk. "Of course I can. You're very faint, though."

"We're ghosts." Neo tells her, and Sati nods again, laughing.

"I know," she says simply, and Neo shifts, despite not truly having a body to shift. Sati turns her head to look at the sun. "Did you see it?"

Confused, Neo follows her gaze. "See what?"

"The sunrise." Sati looks pleased with herself. "I made it for you. Did you see it?"

The sunrise when he'd died, the first thing he'd seen as he'd opened eyes that weren't really there. It had been very beautiful. "I saw it," he says, and Sati smiles again. "Should you be here alone?"

"Seraph will come and find me soon," she says airily, and waves a hand. "I'm not alone, either. You and Trinity are here."

"We're not exactly the best of babysitters," Trinity says hollowly. "We're dead, Sati, we can't protect you from anything."

She nods, and her eyes are very calm. "I will be fine," she tells them, and Neo believes her. There is movement at the corner of his eye and Seraph is there, holding out a hand to Sati. He inclines his head to them (he _can_ see them. It pleases Neo to be able to answer that question), and helps Sati to her feet. "Good-bye," she says with another smile, and they walk away.

Trinity takes his not hand and Neo looks at her, trying to force himself to see. It's like pressing a button, there's a feeling like something snapping in his head and suddenly she's there, faint, golden and green. "You're beautiful," he tells her, and she smiles at him the way she always had.

"I know," she replies, her voice stronger than before, and it is enough. They are dead, and copied into the Matrix, but they are together. Neo looks up at the sun and feels content.


End file.
